Sabrina in Books!

Sabrina in Australia.  An account of Sabrina's 1958-1959 Australian tour from an unpublished book

"Bombshells" - Glamour Girls of a Lifetime

Arthur Askey's autobiography

Barry Crocker's autobiography

From Terry-Thomas' Autobiography – Filling The Gap (1959) - p. 96

Now that I come to think of it, I did once play a hero and a romantic one at that; it was for Picture Post. [29 October 1955]. They were doing one of those three-dimensional picture features (you know, the things you look at through red and green glasses) and the subject was 'My Fondest Dream'.

I said I could imagine myself as a Cavalier rescuing a maiden from the Roundheads. They gave me Sabrina as my heroine - just for the day, of course.

After we had shot these pieces of Tom- or Terry-foolery, Freddie Mullally, the Editor, took us both to lunch at a very charming little Italian restaurant off the Gloucester Road. We were discussing cooking during the meal and Sabrina boasted that she didn't know anything about the subject at all. Freddie said, 'Do you want to marry a rich man?' Sabrina answered, 'Yes, I suppose I do.'

'Well, those marriages very rarely last,' said Freddie, 'and it's within the bounds of possibility that, by the time it's broken up, the charms for which you are famous will have lost some of their glamour and resilience. You'd be surprised what a help being able to cook can be.'
Was it George Meredith who said, 'Cooking lasts longer than kisses' ? I know it wasn't me - because I am a romantic and, much as I love food . . . well, you see what I mean.

Although I know Sabrina quite well, I wonder how she started. Probably in a beauty competition. She comes from Blackpool and, when I used to play there, I seemed to spend half my time in that district - Morecambe, Fleetwood, St Anne's - judging beauty com­petitions.
I always feel a bit of a Charlie at these affairs because I have never really been able to appreciate why, for reasons other than hunger, a girl can bring herself to enter one of these competitions.

I once judged a competition in Shepherd Market with Lady Lewisham, and I noticed she fell, hook, line and sinker, for one of the entrants. I didn't think much of her - the entrant, I mean - but Lady Lewisham has a way with her and she got it. Afterwards, I asked her why she was so keen on this particular girl. She replied, 'She's the only one who's clean.'
I usually chose the one without corns.

Added 21 Feb 2010, thanks to Ian Payne, who is a Richard Wattis fan.

From my original posting of these pictures:

Does anyone have any idea what these 3 pix are?  The only colour ones, it's very unlikely that they are from some unknown film.  Was it a sketch or some publicity for the unknown actor with the sword?

From "Box of Delights: The Golden Age of Television": Sabrina drove men to distraction in the fifties with her version of the fuller figure. With vital statistics of 42-19-36, Sabrina (real name Norma Sykes) was an enormous hit on Arthur Askey's television series 'Before Your Very Eyes'. Aged just seventeen and the daughter of a Blackpool landlady, she was the original dumb blonde. Indeed, part of her gimmick was that she never said a word on screen.

In 1965 she tired of her image and went to the States with the intention of becoming a serious actress. Instead she married a successful young Beverly Hills surgeon, Dr Harold Melsheimer, who had never heard of her. This, she said, was part of the attraction. However, they were subsequently divorced. Now fifty [in 1989] , Sabrina still lives in California and only rarely visits England.

From "Box of Delights: The Golden Age of Television" by Hilary Kingsley & Geoff Tibballs. Published by Macmillan, 1989. Thanks to Simon Vaughan of the APTS for finding this Sabrina Snippet.